Narendra Modi’s fashion in his first year as prime minister of India, after a resounding election victory, is like his politics: inventive, imaginative if slightly unconventional, often loud, and — yes, that monogrammed suit — sometimes controversial.
His penchant for coining terms — ‘cooperative competitive federalism’, which he stakes claim to in his Time interview this month, or his by now famous ‘news traders’ coinage for the media shortly after his win — reflects sartorially too.The half-sleeve ‘Modi kurta’ has, much like the Nehru jacket, entered global fashion lexicon from the realm of Indian politics.
Fashion and governments have this in common: both are cyclical and each season’s trends exist only in comparison to the outgoing ones. So if skinny pants are ‘in’, it is as a reaction to the flares or bootleg cut fading out, and any review of Modi’s fashion is incomplete without comparisons with his predecessor. Manmohan Singh’s choice of stately, if repetitive and uniform-like attire, consisted of crisp
Like several other PMs and politicians before him, Modi too dons the khadi jacket — the cut that FabIndia in a recent ad referred to as ‘The Prime Jacket’, worn by India’s first premier, Jawaharlal Nehru, who reinterpreted the traditional silhouette in a western minimalist style. But unlike the usual black-on-white or blue-on-white or white-on-white combinations that other politicians stick to, Modi references all colours of the cassata ice cream — salmon pink-on-lilac, yellow-on-beige, blue-on-lavender and olive-on-pista green — giving the ensemble his unique stamp.
While he does not shy away from saffron — a colour identified with his party, the BJP, as also with Hinduism — and even stepped out in a blaze of orange to receive the visiting US President at the airport in January, he remains politically correct on solemn State occasions by making sure there are ample references to India’s diversity in his choice of clothing. On his first Independence Day as PM, he wore a bandhani safa in the colours of the national flag. He followed this up on Republic Day with another grand safa , the green and saffron prominent yet again, but with other colours like purple and pink appearing too.
In using his sartorial choices to complement the occasion, Modi is in fact taking forward the legacy of the late Congress leader Indira Gandhi and her daughter-in-law and Congress President Sonia Gandhi. Both women are known for wearing saris that reflect local handloom and craft traditions during their visits around the country. Despite his moorings in a nationalist and conservative party, Modi displays a liberal fashion sense that is open to experimentation, markedly unlike the fixed dress code of his predecessor. .
Modi instead evokes comparisons with Rajiv Gandhi, the modern prime minister, who famously teamed kurta pajama with sneakers, Michelle Obama, the US First Lady, who mixes and matches high-street labels with couture, or Sonia Gandhi, known to source her range of saris from Karol Bagh Saree House to weaves with a designer twist from Tulsi.
Modi teams his khadi and silk kurta churidars with foreign brands like Bvlgari glasses and Movado watch and many interpret this as a sign of his pro-business stance.
He has also drawn criticism with his attempts to extend his mildly disruptive personal style to western clothes. Columnist Karan Thapar, for instance, frowned on Modi’s appearance in formal jackets minus a tie or teamed with polo-neck jumpers during his tour of Germany and France. He declared that the PM was ‘inappropriately dressed’ when everyone else had stuck to a formal dress code. Here Modi appears one with the several Indian PMs before him who have shunned the tie. On the other hand, his Pakistani counterpart, Nawaz Sharif wears it.
You’d be hard put to recall Manmohan Singh in a tie, but he never raised eyebrows because his formal bandhgalas did away with the need for one. While Modi’s critics lose no opportunity to point out that he seems headed to a golf course rather than a summit of world leaders, you could also argue that his colour palette back home is more akin to paint advertisement than the wardrobe of a head of state. Like it or hate it, the PM has been nothing but consistent in his fashion iconoclasm.
Which brings us to the much-reviled monogrammed Modi suit that zoomed into the world press’s viewfinder at the tea he hosted for US President Barack Obama on the lawns of Hyderabad House. As far as dress diplomacy goes, this was a clear disaster — a gracious host does not draw attention to himself with loud clothes — the etiquette watchers hiss. It doesn’t help that the antic puts him in the dubious league of Hosni Mubarak and Carlos Menem.
Political legacies of the sartorial kind have a life of their own. Cue Marcos of the Philippines, whose political downfall catapulted Imelda’s mountain of shoes into a symbol of corruption and misrule, rather than just an indulgence of First Ladies everywhere. Closer home, Tamil Nadu supremo Jayalalithaa may have got a clean chit against corruption charges, but the ‘inventory of her 10,000 saris and 750 shoes’ is unlikely to fade out of popular imagination anytime soon.
Modi’s detractors are quick to characterise the infamous suit as yet another sign of his suspected megalomania and boastfulness. His admirers prefer to pitch it as a former tea-seller’s sign of arrival in a world in thrall of class snobbery: not much unlike the Egyptian-born businessman Mohamed Al-Fayed’s attempt to win the affections of the British elite with his love of flash and labels, or Mayawati’s ostentatious handbags dangling in the face of upper-caste privileges.
Kanika Gahlaut is a Delhi-based journalist